


mistaking your somniloquy

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (But in the best way), Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, Dreams vs. Reality, Love Confessions, M/M, Modern Bucky Barnes, Schmoop, Shrunkyclunks, They're So In Love It's Absurd, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23656654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: Bucky figures he's dreaming Steve's trial-runs at declaring his love in the night when he thinks Bucky's asleep.It is entirely possible that they're both very much mistaken.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 69
Kudos: 373





	mistaking your somniloquy

**Author's Note:**

> We all need some fluff right now. Fluff for fluff's sake. That's all, really.

When you train for the kind of work he does— _did_ , Bucky reminds himself; another lifetime, so far from the warmth of the bed he’s sunk into, the scent of the sheets all himself and Steve intermingled, already inextricably intertwined; the body curled around him—you don’t necessarily expect, in the middle of training more brutal than Bucky thought he’d survived, to stumble across the kind of trick that Bucky’d been using for years as a _tactic_ , instead of little more than a prank. You don’t expect—in such a place, in such circumstances—to have to swallow a snort, bite back a bark of laughter at the memories it immediately brings to the fore in your mind: leaping from the sofa to tickle Becca relentlessly when she’d been blissfully unaware, talking on the phone in hushed tones about her crush on a boy in Bucky’s grade; or the time he’d been home sick and his mother’d made the mistake of discussing Christmas presents when he’d been seemingly fast asleep, and he’d won five bucks off his unsuspecting father for correctly “guessing” what was in each box.

Point being: people are careless, when they think there’s no one listening. And careless? Well, careless, sometimes also means honest. And if you can learn how to breathe, how to loosen your body and lie just so, if you can learn to hold yourself asleep while your mind is wide awake, it just so happens that you can learn a great deal of information without even trying. 

Some of it’s just for show, even among his own teams and units over the years: fun little parlor trick, something to lighten the mood or just bring a moment—nothing more, never more than that—to bear in recognition that there was a world that was brighter beyond where they were, where they’d be; a world they were fighting for, or so they told themselves to get through it until it was done. But whatever was true, it helped them remember there was something softer waiting back home, because even the worst of where they’d been was better than where they presently were. Bucky’s pretty sure he still does it now and again without even noticing, the quiet of the night soothing enough to prove more peaceful than when sleep sometimes comes.

So sometimes, it was a quick laugh, cheap gag; juvenile, really. 

But sometimes? It meant the difference between life and death. 

And maybe Bucky’s being dramatic, but then maybe he’s not. Because there’s no covert op or classified intel, no precious cargo or gun to his head, so yeah, it’s really fucking different now—but this?

 _This_ might still be a matter of life or death.

__________

In his defense? For a good long while, he just thinks they’re dreams.

And while the nightmares are so much more rare than he ever imagined they could grow to be, now, he’s still wired to treasure the dreams and cling to them hard: the weird ones, the inane ones, the simple ones, the ones that seem real but in the most quotidien ways like wish fulfillment, like doing laundry so that he genuinely believes it’s been folded and put away until he goes for a pair of jeans only to find they’re still in the dryer.

But these: these are like sunshine and the way it felt when he was prone in a hospital bed with the injuries that took him out of the game and changed his life—for the worse, the _worst_ at the time, he was certain, but now, _now_ he knows it was for the better because it led him _here_ —but these dreams, they feel almost like he did when the pain was bearable and he could push aside the anger and frustration and sheer sense of grief and despair and just feel his own heartbeat like a marvel, like the miracle it was to have survived: the dreams feel so much like that he’s breathless for them, buoyant with them even once he’s fully awake.

But when the truth becomes clear, he remembers, vividly—the things that people say, when they don’t think anyone’s listening: matters of life and death, he knows.

He tries to believe that applies, here. He tries to believe that’s still true because if it is, if it ever could be—

But in truth, he thinks they’re dreams. And he doesn’t realize the truth for a while, not until he’s heard the things that make his very being, _here_ , feel goddamn miraculous.

__________

_I hate being trapped, feeling trapped._

Bucky’s chest is where it always is: sprawled atop Steve, lifted by Steve’s deep, even breaths. His arms are where they always are: wrapped around Steve’s chest, tucked under Steve’s arms where _those_ arms are all splayed palms over dream-Bucky’s back. Bucky’s ankles are hooked around Steve’s calves, and maybe, dream-Bucky’s hazy awareness registers, could make a person feel trap—

 _I have never felt grateful, truly grateful, to wake up, until I first woke up with you_.

Bucky’s breathing doesn’t change, because that doesn’t happen in a dream, does it, but his lungs feel like they can’t take in air. It feels a little like the whole world shifts on its axis because it sounds _maybe_ like _Steve’s_ world shifted on its axis when he met Bucky.

Bucky thought it was just him.

_Your weight on my chest, your arms around me—_

And arms tighten a little bit around Bucky, at that, too.

 _Your breath on my neck, soft and_ , Bucky can feel Steve’s heart kick where their chests are flush, and oh, that’s intimate.

Oh, that’s _beautiful_.

 _Never once does it feel like I’m trapped. It feels like I never want to leave, never want you to,_ and Bucky would huff, maybe. Like he’d knowingly, willfully do anything that Steve didn’t want from him, like he’d do that to _Steve_ —

_I’ve never felt safe, like that. Like I do with you._

There’s a white noise that starts to permeate, and there’s a little bit of himself that knows sleep is swirling differently around him now. Dreams do that, that little bit of himself knows.

 _Love_ , Bucky hears, and it vibrates the blood in his veins because maybe, maybe it’s, maybe the rest of it is something, is what Bucky wants and needs and, and;

_I—_

The white noise wins. Bucky doesn’t have a chance to decide or decipher what the words around _that word_ could have been.

__________

And maybe that should have been a hint: dreams never feel that overwhelmingly beautiful, that warm, they don’t create sense of nerves and giddiness and jubilant disbelief and hope for a future he’s been thinking about, envisioning more than he wants to admit but at the same time would never deny because he knows he’s in love, he knows it’s too soon and his heart feels so full just hearing those words and it’s just the way it is. It’s maybe _all_ there is.

Dreams, Bucky thinks—when there’s time and reason to _think_ about it—have never been that visceral. Have never left his heart soaring so long after he wakes up; not for him. But in the moments that follow them, and the liminal little bubbles that swell in his chest and around his consciousness—it’s not enough to make sense of it, or question it too deeply.

Who tries to make sense of dreams, anyway?

__________

_Can I tell you something dumb?_

Bucky feels a soft serenity overcome him in the dark, in the dreamscape: Steve is dumb, Steve is _so_ dumb, and Bucky’s in love with this dumb motherfucker like he never thought he was capable of loving at all.

 _When we met, when we_ , and there’s a hitch in a breath; there’s a frustrated sigh and a swallow: starting again.

 _At the beginning, you, you just,_ and the smile is so clear in the words that Bucky thinks his own lips, his dream-lips, curl in reply; _I’d never felt anything like it before, and my_ , there’s a crack between letters; pure emotions: _Jesus_.

Bucky’s pulse, his dream-pulse, trills like a bird, like an orchestra solo that speaks only to the good things in the world, only the potential for beauty and the thing, the one thing he’s always biting his tongue against, that pulls the muscle fibers at the center of his chest and makes the organ than comprise impossibly bigger without a moment’s pain for the stretching to fit what he feels. What he didn’t know he could know or touch or hold.

 _You made my heart flutter?_ It’s not a question but it sounds like one, and Bucky, in the dream, almost wants to laugh, except it’s so earnest, so soulful, he couldn’t if he tried. 

_I was scared, because I thought maybe the serum was wearing off or something_ , there’s a huff of a laugh there, though, but it’s not humor that’s in it. It’s not humor; it’s not something to fear either. 

_But that, it was just you. All you, and I was in so deep, so fast_ , and Bucky can feel the shake of a head, lips at the nape of his neck.

 _So fuckin’ fast, Buck_ , and yes. Yes, so fucking _fast_ , and if they both fell, if they’re both still falling too quick, or just right, they can catch each other. They can grasp and keep.

Maybe.

 _It still happens_ , the voice is so soft, like the words it’s shaping are precious things; _when you look up from a book. When we meet for coffee, and I walk in and you find my eyes, it’s—_

The words break off; regroup.

 _You find me, Buck_, and there’s a sob somewhere on the edge of those words, but it’s not sorrowful, it’s just something in this, or maybe all of this, and it’s overflowing and so that’s how it finds release: _You found me when no one else could, when no one else was looking and I—_

The breath that follows is so shaky, and still so sure:

_I love you._

Bucky knew he ached for those words, deep down; ached for those words in _this_ voice, from _this_ man—he _knew_ , but he’s not sure he knew quite this _much_ , this deep. It’s, it’s—

_God, I love you._

And then he blinks, and Steve’s curled around him in the dark. 

But Bucky; Bucky still feels warm like he’s never felt before.

__________

_You know, when I’m away, when I have to leave,_ Bucky feels a rush of ice, a clench in his chest because he hates it, he hates when Steve has to leave and he knows he’ll never feel differently, knows he’ll never learn how not to worry and doesn’t want to, but he’ll live with it, he’ll take it with the whole package because Steve.

 _Steve_.

 _Sometimes, I’ll see something wrong, something terrible happening here,_ that beautiful voice is so strained, like it would snap with the slightest touch; _or some would-be villain, they run off at the mouth about losing everything I hold dear, everything I love,_ and that’s the touch, that’s the pressure that snaps it, that makes it come undone but Bucky can’t move, somehow; can’t turn to hold him and presume that _he_ , that _Bucky_ is what he _loves_ —

But maybe. Maybe that’s exactly what this means. Maybe Bucky needs to listen, and just believe in what his senses, his instincts say to him louder than the doubts that wail through his chest.

 _And I pray,_ those words are almost nonexistent, so low and gentle, more felt than heard. _I pray, Buck, to a god I stopped believing in decades ago, and anyone, anything else that might be listening and would choose to be kind._

And Bucky feels wetness trail down the side of his neck, and a shaky inhale, and tears in dreams—can you feel them? Would they taste like salt?

_But I pray you’re safe. I pray, and I can’t fucking breathe until I know you’re okay, and my heart beats right again. Because the, the—_

Steve’s whole _body_ shakes, then, and Bucky tries to make himself like a refuge, though he doesn’t know if he succeeds.

_Because the man I love is still alive and breathing in this world and my heart can beat again._

Bucky’s breathing doesn’t change, but it does. It _does_. _He_ does.

The whole world, the _whole_ world changes.

_You make me pray to things I don’t believe in, or can’t even fathom, and don’t understand. Because you’re more than any of it. You’re worth shouting to the universe on just the hope that it’ll keep you. That I can…_

The changed world fades, and Bucky's heart is so full as he falls from the dream.

__________

_You’re what makes me want to fight, too. When I’m away._

Now, that’s a tone Bucky recognizes. Speculative. Reflective. Like it’s discovering something new about itself, and Bucky’s struck by the fact that he’s the impetus. He’s the cause.

_I was always going to serve. A purpose. A nation. A mission. But you make me want to fight, because serving is for other people, and fighting is a little more selfish, I think. Maybe, I dunno. Feels that way. You make me want to fight, because fighting is about a cause, sure, but it’s also about a victor, it’s about a win, it’s about reward on the side of that cause, too, and I didn’t realize I’d never been fighting with a sense of needing to win, to walk away whole…_

Bucky feels a rush of unmitigated fear, terror, the very _idea_ of Steve fighting without that need, ever—

_Maybe it’s because I wasn’t. I wasn’t whole, Buck. You helped me see that. You help me fill that space every single goddamn day._

Bucky swallows. Hard. It’s so tight in his chest when he does.

_I fight, now, though, is the thing. I fight because there’s you to come back to. I fight so I can come home, because I’m in love with you, and you’re home._

___That means love, that means _love_ —_ _ _

_____ _

__________

_Already, Buck,_ and Bucky knows he’s entering this conversation, his awareness is hearing whatever desire his mind’s conjuring partway through.

_Already you’re everywhere. You’re in every part of me. My whole heart._

And Bucky wishes his mind would have let him hear all the beautiful musings, the soft, quiet confessions in the dark of night, at the core of Bucky’s soul unleashed in these private spaces when the world isn’t ready, when _already_ is exactly it but Steve says the words in Bucky’s heart, too. His _whole_ heart.

 _Fuck, fuck, too much,_ and that’s weird, but Bucky knows weird dreams too, but this doesn’t feel like that, this was one of the impossibly perfect dreams, they don’t turn weird.

_Jesus Rogers, you idiot—_

__________

And that’s when the impossible… _possibility_ , of this, _all_ of _this_ , every word and confession and the sound of that much feeling in the voice Bucky knows in his heart he wants to live the rest of his life waking up to, wants to breathe his last with that whisper at his ear—

He’s not so dramatic—usually—to pretend he’d die of a broken heart if it turned out Steve didn’t want this like Bucky does: even if Bucky knows damn well it’d be heartbreak, and nothing less, that’d consume him if that’s somehow where this ended up. What they have is good, it’s _so good_ , but there’s so much beating through Bucky’s veins that could overwhelm it, could smother it, could break it into pieces and that’d be a real loss: not just of possibility, but for all the things in him that want to wrap Steve in safety, in affection and warmth in ways he’s never felt, never wanted with _anyone_ before. It’d be a death of those things, and what they could one day become. And that’s enough to give him pause; to weigh in the pit of his stomach.

Life, though. 

That’s where it hits home, because Bucky _can_ see a life, a future in this, what they’re building. He’s told himself that was heady on its own, that was sufficient to justify the warm tightness that pulls around his ribs—

And why would his dream-mind, his dream-heart, his dream-wants: why would they stop in the middle of confessing the deepest of his emotions, tied up around Steve and held so close, so goddamn close. Why would his dream-self let dream-Steve chastise the idea of telling Bucky exactly what he wants to hear?

And why can Bucky never say anything, why can Bucky never respond, why does Bucky’s breathing never change when all he wants to do is gasp and let his heart lead and—

And Bucky thinks of training, and listening, and what people say when they think no one’s listening, and somehow, _somehow_ , he starts thinking about the possibility of this maybe, _maybe_ , absolutely not being a dream.

__________

Steve’s warm against him, as always, underneath him.

Steve opens his mouth, and Bucky breathes deep, because he can, and he speaks, because either he’s been asleep, and is asleep, and it’s not a risk.

Or he’s awake, and he’s been awake, and Steve loves, Steve _loves_ —

He looks up, and only sees the glint of light on the curve of Steve’s eyes but he holds them, doesn’t blink and rasps because it’s so big it almost gets stuck coming out:

“I love you.”

Steve stills. Freezes.

Bucky isn’t asleep. Bucky was never asleep.

He’s in love. _They’re_ in _love_. 

“I love you too,” Bucky says it again, the words loose now, the space open for it all to spill without restraint; “so much, so fucking much, Steve.”

“Bucky?” The sound of his name is so strangled, and Bucky’s close to Steve’s chest, he can feel Steve’s pulse pounding, thrashing, but he’s not close enough he should be able to _hear_ it but he can: that strong, powerful heartbeat reeling and Bucky thinks—his whole heart.

He’s that whole heart, and Steve is his, and god. 

_God_.

“You make my heart flutter too,” Bucky says, desperate and frantic and so overjoyed he can barely stand it. “I pray to a god I don’t think is there that you’ll come home, every time, that I can hold you again because that’s the only thing worth having.” And his eyes are adjusting, and he sees shock and horror but the slightly, most joyful spark of hope underneath that all Bucky has to do it coax out.

So he cups Steve’s face, and feels the flush on them under his fingertips, and leans in to kiss Steve, soft and light so he can speak the words right into Steve’s mouth like a prayer to something he _does_ believe in:

“I _love_ you, and if it’s too soon I don’t care, I don’t _care_ because I’ve never felt like this, for anybody, not for _anybody_ —”

“Buck,” Steve mouths against Bucky’s lips. “Buck, you,” he gasps when Bucky runs the blunts of his teeth on Steve’s lower lips. “You _heard_ —”

“I thought they were dreams,” and Steve’s body reacts to that; hears everything it means underneath what it means. “They were everything I wanted and nothing I ever thought I’d—”

Steve’s hand is on Bucky’s, threading fingers together and leading Bucky’s palm open to the center of Steve’s chest.

“Feel,” Steve whispers, and just breathes. And Bucky feels, he _feels_ so goddamn _much_ but under his hands he feels, and he smiles:

“Fluttering,” he murmurs, and looks at Steve like the world makes sense and his own heart’s fluttering just as fast.

“Yeah,” Steve exhales, and holds Bucky’s hand to his chest like the idea of it moving might break the whole world, might break the very heart beneath his touch.

“I’m so in love with you,” Steve says, and oh, _oh_ , Bucky can feel the words under his hand, too. The heartbeat and the breath and the words and it’s so much, it’s _so much_.

“For always,” Steve continues, and fuck, that’s so much _more_ : “as long as you want, as long as you’ll have me—”

“For always,” Bucky breathes, and leans back to kiss Steve, deeper now, heart soaring and mind whirring and the world alight in his chest. 

“Always, Steven Grant Rogers,” Bucky tells him, pressing closer into Steve’s chest like he can meld into it, hold the heart Steve said held _Bucky_ in his hands and show him how much it means to him, how much he’ll cherish it and keep it and press it straight into his own chest for safekeeping next to the heart that made of _Steve_ : he presses into Steve’s chest, and he strokes Steve’s cheekbone, and he looks at Steve with a wonder that’s only matched by the wonder staring back up at him. 

“ _Always_.”

**Author's Note:**

> **posted on behalf of the author while they’re ill in COVID quarantine; edits and comment replies will be delayed**


End file.
